I play video games and review them.

Archive for the month “January, 2018”

Pennywise the Dancing Clown stalks you through the Neibolt House. Can you escape the literal monster clown, or will you become IT’s lunch?

Ever since seeing IT in theaters, I’ve been obsessed with everything Stephen King. Therefore, I had to get this game and let me say that I have a love/hate relationship with it, pun not intended. When I first downloaded the game, all I could see was a black screen effect until the game crashed and took me back to the home screen. Then I decided to play the VR experience on YOUTUBE, which is not the same thing but still succeeded in scaring me.

It wasn’t until days later that I was able to play it and, even then, I still had issues with the game crashing in mid-play. It was a miracle for me to go through one single play through without a crash. I can’t even count how many times I had to delete the game, turn off my phone, turn it back on after a few minutes and re-install the game. I found this very frustrating.

I’m sure many people who are familiar with Stephen King know the story of IT. The game’s adapted from the most recent IT film, which itself is adapted from the novel. It’s about a clown that lurks in the sewers of Derry, Maine, luring children to IT’s feeding ground and swallowing them whole. The clown can also take the form of your worst fears and I’ve been terrified of IT since I saw Tim Curry play the clown in the 1990 Mini-Series. Let me tell you, Pennywise in the 2017 version is even scarier and seeing IT in VR is much worse.

During my first attempts, I found myself too scared to play the game all the way through. Then I started pulling my Google Cardboard away at frightening moments. I found my heart pounding like mad when Pennywise would get a close up, similar to how I felt in the VR experience on YOUTUBE. The game play itself is also rather simplistic as you hover over a door and wait for it to fully light up. Unfortunately, this process takes awhile and destroys the game’s sense of urgency. During the game, you also see clever nods to the movie such as Eddie’s leper and Pennywise appearing on TV in a kid’s show. Be prepared for a huge let down as the game only has two endings and, no matter what door you pick, you’ll always end up in the same room. The only difference is that, when you have to choose between the first three doors, you get a different experience each time.

Then you have to choose between two doors, one that will get you out of the house and the other puts you in Pennywise’s clutches. It feels less like a game and more like an advertisement for the Blu-Ray.

This game is scary and frustrating. I give it 5 out of 10; it’s an amazing experience, but not worth all of the trouble you have to go through.

You’ve found a phone that once belonged to a teenage boy named Sam. What kind of person was he and how did he lose his phone? Go through his phone to find out.

In real life, if you find someone’s phone on the ground, don’t go through it. Even if you did, you wouldn’t be able to crack the password. Anyway, you might read the summary and think this must be a boring game. First, I should say that you couldn’t be more wrong. Second, I should also say that I found this game on Gamehouse and it’s a little more controversial than what they usually publish. Spoiler alert, Sam is a bisexual transgender who lives in a conservative town. She has issues with who she is due to close-minded people surrounding her, including her own parents. The story is about the relationships Sam has with her friends while trying to discover who she is. It’s similar to Gone Home about a teenage girl’s struggles with her homosexuality. Considering that the closest Gamehouse Original Stories has to an LGBT character is Francois, who has yet to come out of the plot closet, this is quite a shock. They also deal in stories that are more family friendly. I’m not saying that the LGBT shouldn’t have representation in children’s entertainment, quite the opposite. It’s just that the game also deals with misogyny when they not so subtly hint to a rape attempt. The guy blames the girl for leading him on and then shunning him. What actually happened was that the girl wore a provocative dress, her boyfriend got a little drunk and he forced her to press against him when they danced. She told him no and he got mad. To make a bad situation worse, when she went home to her father and said that a stranger molested her, he told her that, the way she’s dressed, she asked for it. I remember in Elementary School that they had one motivational poster about how you are responsible for you. Ironically, society itself often contradicts this message. This is similar to how bullies say that, if their victims didn’t want people to beat them up, they shouldn’t act different from everyone else. It’s something that Frasier and The Big Bang Theory agree with. In the former, Martin tells Frasier and Niles about when they were children and into the British television series The Avengers to the point of wearing bowler hats. Then says that it’s something they shouldn’t have done because they made themselves a target. In the latter, Penny once claimed that she felt guilty for picking on the geeks in high school and then claims that, if one of the kids didn’t want to get beat up, they shouldn’t have shown up to school wearing a bow tie. While rape and getting beat up might not be on the same level, the point still stands. Frasier and Niles should be able to wear bowler hats if they want to. A boy should be able to go to high school wearing a bow tie without getting beat up. If a girl wants to wear a provocative dress because she looks good in it, she should be able to without having to worry about rape or molestation. This serves to point out how screwed up Sam’s town is and how liberal she is in comparison by telling the girl that it’s not her fault. That’s not the only discrimination you can find in this game. For instance, someone sets fire to an LGBT center and people around Sam, even his own parents, say that it’s a good thing. I’m not sure if I mentioned this in a former review, but I have Aspergers, which is a low-level form of Autism. I was lucky enough to have an understanding mother, but stories such as Silent Voice taught me about the discrimination people like me face. One thing I learned is that parents do murder their autistic children and many people feel sympathy for the parents. The news reporters even treat it as a mercy death rather than talk about how the children could grow up to accomplish so many things. Therefore, I can somewhat relate to what Sam’s going through in my own struggles to accept my Aspergers. However, as someone pointed out in his or her own review, the gameplay does undermine the message.

As I said in the first paragraph, you find Sam’s phone and violate her privacy. It goes much further than that as you scan her text messages and emails to discover her passwords.

You even send emails and pictures to other people pretending to be her. While the detective work makes for intriguing game play, you not only violate Sam’s privacy, but also her rights. I can only think of three people who would do something like this, House, Sherlock and Dean Winchester. All of them would do this to solve a case, though the former two might also do this because they’re a**holes. Apparently, the designer of the game didn’t think that part through. You could’ve easily had this be about a detective solving a murder investigation, or an amnesiac Sam going through his phone to discover who he is. Instead, the only clue I have about what kind of person you play is that they’re a d*ck without any regard for personal space. Just the kind of person I would hate to run into. At least, in Gone Home, you play the role of a young woman coming back from college to an empty home trying to figure out where everyone went. Even she refused to dig too deep by refusing to read her sister’s diary about her first sexual encounter.

This game is addictive and intriguing. I give it 8 out of 10; the game play undermines the story’s message.

After Angela quits her job and leaves her husband, she finds herself competing on a reality show hosted by the one and only fashion designer, Truly. The prize is a chance to become the next big fashion designer. Does Angela have what it takes to win?

Do you remember the cliffhanger at the end of Sweet Revenge where Angela thinks she might be pregnant? Well that gets resolved in the very beginning, she’s not. It makes the whole game and its cliffhanger null and void. The only important events from the first game are that Angela doesn’t work for Yum-Mee anymore and she’s single, giving her all sorts of potential love interests. The first one is the cop who helped her in the first game, who makes a cameo appearance in this one. The second one shows up later in the game. I don’t know if I already talked about this, but I think that the designers had to get rid of Jimmy. If you’re not familiar with the Delicious series, Jimmy is, or was, Angela’s husband first introduced to us in Emily’s True Love. Jimmy functioned in the series as comic relief, Angela’s glorified sugar daddy and a possible connection to the mafia. Now that Angela’s found her own way as a designer, she’s outgrown him. However, if Angela divorced Jimmy in order to pursue younger and more attractive men, it would cast her in a shallow light. Therefore, they had Jimmy cheat and Angela can dump him without looking evil.

The designers went so out of their way to get rid of any connection to Jimmy that they tossed a plot device brought up in the first game out the window. Personally, I feel that, if you drop a bombshell this huge, you need to be prepared to follow it through. Otherwise it’s all for nothing.

The plot line has similarities to the Delicious game, Emily’s Taste of Fame. For those of you who never played it, the game is about Emily getting an offer to host her own cooking show. Along the way, she meets the colorful characters of Snuggford and helps them with their problems. When Emily finally gets on the show, she realizes that the life of a TV star isn’t for her, quits and goes back to her humble life in Snuggford. In this game, Angela gets her chance to be on a reality show and travels all around the world.

Unlike Emily, her sister, Angela loves her life of fame and craves it the way an alcoholic craves liquor. She even forgets to send a text to one of her friends on her birthday in favor of signing autographs for her newfound fans. This illustrates the differences between the two sisters as Emily is more of a homebody who runs her restaurant and is content with her humble small-town life. Angela craves a wilder lifestyle and loves being the center of attention. The tone of their games further drives this point home, as Emily’s games are more along the lines of shows like Modern Family while Angela’s games are more along the lines of How I Met Your Mother.

I’ll admit that I’ve always felt more drawn to Angela rather than Emily due to the former’s nature that is more carefree. However, some of Angela’s behavior in this game is truly disgusting. I understand that the game is trying to illustrate Angela’s corruption by the famous lifestyle. However, the writers never address one issue. Be warned that this paragraph contains spoilers so read with caution. Truly’s show is a sham as she schemes to eliminate each contestant and competes under the alias Lori. She even goes so far as to blackmail one of her models, Eric, into seducing Angela. Eric is, for lack of a better term, Truly’s whore and the game does not portray it for comedy or make light of the situation in any way. I should explain that one of the rules of Truly’s competition is that the designers are not allowed to get involved with models. If Truly finds out about Angela’s relationship with Eric, she has reason to kick her off the show. However, when Angela finds out that Eric is Truly’s boyfriend, she does not question why Eric is unfaithful to her. Later in the game, Truly invites Angela’s friends to come see her. One of them, Jenny, becomes a model for Angela and flirts with Eric at a club. Jenny has no idea that Angela and Eric have a thing and apologizes to Angela when she finds out. At no point in the game does Angela confront Eric about this. Instead, she takes all her anger out on Jenny by stealing her dress and using it to get Eric’s attention. Understandably, Angela’s friends are angry about this and leave but still come through later on when she needs them. As for Truly’s scheme, Angela does get her revenge. This is another illustration about the differences between her and Emily. When someone wrongs Emily, the people she helps throughout her adventure return to help her overcome the one who wronged her and, if possible, tries to make amends with them. When someone wrongs Angela, she takes matters into her own hands by getting revenge in creative ways.

The game play is similar to Delicious with clothes instead of food. Angela makes outfits, jewelry, gets cosmetics for her customers or models, and checks them out. Some of them visit the changing room or, in some levels, get their hair done at the mirror. Angela has to clean up after that for extra points.

Some levels even require an extra activity for Angela to complete and get more points. Each level has their own mouse and, unlike Delicious, offers cleaning bonuses. The layout of the second game is rather different from the first due to Angela not marking each level with her own Facebook posts. I have to admit, I rather missed that aspect. Angela also gets her own pure activity levels throughout the game, though they’re the same in each section. Pick a dress for Angela to design, draw sketches for it, move the box of supplies, collect the supplies and finally sew the dress.

In the second venue, you have to chase the different contestants away from your dress so they don’t sabotage you. Believe me it gets repetitive after awhile. You can also buy upgrades for each venue and even purchase entertainers and checkout clerks. Though you have to buy the latter two every single level, another aspect that’s rather grating.

This game is fun but needs improvement. I give it 6 out of 10, a nice distraction but rather lacking in both storyline and game play.

Did you love the movie Frozen? Now you can live in it in Snow Queen Scene Maker! Create characters and dress them up in styles inspired by the popular Disney movie.

Since this is a dollmaker, I’m afraid that it doesn’t really have a plot. However, there’s plenty of game play. As I said, you get to create characters and dress them up however you like. The girls come with two poses, one for ballgowns and pants and the other for catsuits and elegant dresses. The guys only have one pose, but you can still dress them however you please. You can even decorate them with drag and drop items. Unfortunately, the drag and drop only works when you have them facing right. You can use this dollmaker to create original characters or recreate existing characters. I have used this dollmaker to create an original alien of mine, Defoli Nurmeen,

Like many dollmakers, you can’t really change the body-type and you can only change the woman’s face-type to make it pointy or not pointy. The man only has three available face-types himself. It’s also easier to make an ugly man in the dollmaker than it is an ugly woman. You can also pick the background, all choices inspired by Frozen.

This game is fun and one of my go to dollmakers. I give it 6 out of 10, fans of Frozen will love this game.